A father of seven shot to death at a Memorial Day gathering was looked up to as a man who turned his life around and helped others do the same, his family told NBC 7 Tuesday.
Joel Branch, 47, was with a group on his patio Monday night when two men walked up and fatally shot him and his cousin, 48-year-old Gerald Morris.
“It's bad. This is bad. He was my only baby,” Branch’s mother Kathy said.
Branch, who went by the nickname “Junior,” was thought of as a real hero in his Valencia Park neighborhood after he not only pulled himself out of a life of crime and poverty, but started a company that helped others do the same.
If there was a favorite house to visit in the community, by most accounts, it would be Branch's home.
“He fed so many different people. Homeless, guys out of prison,” Branch’s brother Anthony Hicks said.
Family members said Branch changed his ways more than a decade ago, and soon he owned his own landscaping and hauling business. He brought along a few friends who were also looking for a legitimate future.
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“He was able to reach back once the business started to grow and teach the skills that a lot of guys including myself didn't have,” Hicks said.
Branch was known to invite the whole neighborhood to his front patio to watch sports on his big screen TV. Such was the case on Memorial Day when he was killed.
His two teenage sons were there when he was shot along with Morris. A third man in his 30s suffered a gunshot wound to his shoulder but is expected to survive.
“We don't know how we was going to make it. He was the leader of the pack. He held the family together,” Branch’s sister Kathy Jeffrey said. She told NBC 7 she has to keep going for the seven children Branch leaves behind.
Homicide investigators said they are looking for two shooters who ran eastbound on Groveland Drive. Neither has been found.
Who they are and why they carried out this tragic shooting is a mystery even to those who knew the victims best.
“We're hurting. We're in mourning right now. This is devastating to us,” Hicks said.
On Friday, the Valencia Park community, including residents and local church pastors, is coming together at the Jacobs Center to rally for peace and ask that anyone with information that could lead to the arrest of these suspects come forward.
The family has started a GoFundMe page to accept donations in his memory.
